Our Last Workshop at Heathfield

On Wednesday we went back to Heathfield Primary School, but this time to work with some of the year 2's. We decided to take along activities which involved making imagery of hands. We thought it would be good to talk to the children about what we use our hands for.
So we used this giant hand to start the session. We stood in a circle and talked as a group about the different things we use our hands for, and then we each held up the hand and introduced ourselves, I said "My name is Anna, and I use my hands for making art." and then each of the children in turn did the same. This was a good ice-breaker, and the children liked holding the giant hand.Then we did various activities in order to generate lots of hands to stick onto the giant hand. We drew around each others hands, and decorated them like the Moroccan Khamsa sign for good luck.We wrote words on the hands of things we use our hands for. We used feathers, sequins, stickers, coloured paper and foam letters and shapes.
We scanned our hands in, and printed them off. We kept going until we had enough to cover the whole of the big hand.
Then we laid the hand on the floor and starting carefully sticking all of the hands we had made on. There were quite a few to stick down, but we had fun doing it. In the end we all admired our hand-y work...
I learnt that felt pens are not the best things to use for drawing around hands.
Last time we visited the school we left a big stack of our postcards with Mo, and he distributed them around the school. During the session children would pop in to deliver their postcards, we got lots of great comments, and dreams for the future, which we were really pleased with. We have decided to display the postcards at the Showcase Event on May 16th, because we are so pleased with them. Thank you to Heathfield Primary School for having us, we had a lot of fun - and a special thank you to Mo, for organising things for us, and being so brilliant.

On Wednesday 1st April we visited Heathfield Primary School and worked with a group of 8 year 5 year pupils. Together we made a wire sculpture wall hanging, that showed the individual characters of everyone involved.


At first the group weren’t sure that they would be able to make wire sculptures but we started with simple drawings of stick men, then turned these into 3D sculptures. Before long the whole group were feeling really confident and each made a section of the wall hanging. To make the work we used our hands for making and for decoration.


Anna and I really enjoyed the workshop and we got to speak to the pupils about their thoughts about the area they live in and what types of things they would like to see happening. Some of the comments we gathered were:


-I would wish to live in a big mansion with a swimming pool with 60 bedrooms and a play ground. With my giant bedroom with a beach. With a Safari park.
-I like to be friends and playing together. I wish we had lots of parks and some zoos. I had a dream it was lots of animals.
-I will love to live in France with a lovely house and a river with parks and everyone got on with each other and a pretty beach.
-I want to make lot of beach in every country and to own my mansion with 50 rooms and 1 big pool.
-Lozells is okay, but it can improve. People should stop smoking stealing and having drugs. The should be better parks. There definitely should be horses. People should be allowed to ride them on the roads along with cars. In the parks, there should be animals and toys. Definitely more space.
-Skate park by my house. No alcohol and drugs.
-Skate park. Dustbins.
-I live in Birmingham, I would like everyone to be friends and live in a mansion, own a hotel and 3 private jets. I would really like a lot of parks, beaches and we are allowed to ride on horses and cars. Definitely a huge amount of zoos.
-I would like to have a mansion and a bungalow and wish everybody gets on.


Some of the wishes and dreams are grand and will require lots of work to achieve, but some are small and so simple that they could be just around the corner. We hope that all the pupils involved get their wishes to come true.


We hope that we have inspired the pupils to make more things out of wire and pipe cleaners and that they can use the techniques we have taught them. We hope that we have made them think about the future of the area that they live in and that they work to make it the place they want it to be. We are looking forward to going back to the school on the 22nd April to meet some of the younger pupils and seeing what things they would like to see.